If you go

When: The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where: 18881 Von Karman Ave., Suite 100.

Cost: General admission is $5. Children, students and seniors ages 60 and older get in free. Admission is free the second Wednesday of every month.

The museum validates parking for visitors. For more information, call 949-476-0294 or visit irvinemuseum.org.

After two decades of Impressionism in Irvine at a venue near the John Wayne Airport, art aficionados are honoring the city's premier museum on the style as it leaves its teenage years behind.

Celebrating its 20th with an exhibit of its most popular work, The Irvine Museum preserves California Impressionist art from 1890 to 1930 – an easy, free-flowing style that captures the light and movement in the Golden State landscape before today's mass urbanization and development.

On display through June 6, "Lasting Impressions: Twenty Years of The Irvine Museum" spotlights artists such as Franz A. Bischoff, George Brandriff, Alson S. Clark, Frank Cuprien, Paul de Longpré, William A. Griffith, Joseph Kleitsch, Granville Redmond, Guy Rose, Donna Schuster and William Wendt. Eight pieces of art by local children are also on display.

Hoping to build a museum as dynamic as the style itself, the founders made a point of sending parts of their collection on tour to educate audiences around the country. Of the more than 65 exhibitions that have adorned the museum's walls, 17 have gone abroad along with 18 of the institution's own books on the style.

The local mainstay has built a particular brand of loyalty among its audiences and its leadership. Of the four founders – Joan Irvine Smith, Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke, president James Irvine Swinden and executive director Jean Stern – Smith, Swinden and Stern are celebrating their own 20th along with the museum.

FIVE QUESTIONS WITH EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR JEAN STERN

One of the founding fathers of the museum, Jean Stern has led the Irvine institution since it first opened its doors in January 1993. We asked him for his thoughts on the milestone.

Q: So this is your 20th. How does it feel?

A: I feel a great sense of accomplishment. It seems like it's only been a few months sometimes, and it's gone by very quickly, which is a good sign. It means that we're enjoying this, and I'm looking forward to another generation of children. The children are our hope for the future, and they're way ahead of the adults in terms of awareness about things like environment. They're the ones that we want to reach because we can still help shape their future. But we have a lot of faithful adult visitors, a lot of seniors that come to every show that we have, and we just want to make it bigger and better.

Q: Why was it important for you to be involved in the preservation of this style?

A: It's an art style that had long been overlooked. There were a lot of classes available in colleges throughout the country – this was 25 years ago – on American art, but they never entered California in terms of their area of study and it was a beautiful art style and significant art style that was ignored for a good part. My goal was to get this material out so people could see how beautiful it is; so that people in California could understand that they have a very important heritage in the American art world. These paintings show the land that existed in California before the mass development that happened after World War II, and though we all understand that we need houses and shopping centers and freeways, we want people to understand that we have a lot of beauty here, and that it should be preserved for future generations.

Q: What characterizes California Impressionism?

A: It has to do with painting outdoors, so you can capture that natural light. And it's also a great spiritual affinity to the land to the trees to the mountains, the sky, the rivers, and it's painted in a very quick manner because when you're outdoors you have to paint quickly. Otherwise, the sun moves, the shadows move, and after two hours it's a completely different painting in form and color. Generally, the way this type of painting is done is you do a preparatory sketch on the spot outdoors, and then you paint a larger painting in the studio. The task is to create the sense of being outdoors; there's always movement. Natural light never stands still. There's movement in the light, movement in the subject of the trees, the bushes, the grass. The quick choppy brushstroke is both a natural consequence of being in a hurry but also trying to create this sense of movement, which is very hard to do in the studio when you don't see what's happening and you're painting in very tight detail.

Q: How has the landscape of the museum changed in the last two decades?

A: When we founded the museum, we decided to define a museum not as a building but as a collection that travels and is available to be seen as many people as possible. We're still in a temporary – if you call 20 years temporary – locale but we have visited more than 40 other cities and even sent an exhibit to Europe. So the goal was to make the paintings available to as many people as possible. To make that happen, when we do tour our exhibits all over California and all across the U.S., we do not charge a rental fee.

Q: What will the next 20 years look like?

A: Well, there's the long-range plan of having a permanent home and having a bigger structure where we can have three exhibitions. We can only have one exhibition at a time right now. ... Since the beginning, (co-founder and chair Joan Irvine) Smith has paid for the school buses for all the schoolchildren that have visited us over the years. It's a continuing process to have the museum reach out and be a force in education and for aesthetics.

Matteo Sandona's "In Her Kimono" is a part of Irvine Museum's exhibit called Lasting Impressions: Twenty Years of the Irvine Museum on display through June 6. ROD VEAL, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Vahe, center, and Armine Meghrouni, of Newport Beach, greet a friend Heidi Aharonian, a ceramics artist, at the 20-year anniversary of The Irvine Museum. "We are so fortunate to have this in our backyard," said Vahe Meghrouni Thursday night. ROD VEAL, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Kathy Winton, a docent at the Irvine Museum, talks with her husand Dan Winton and Lisa Hillgren, of Newport Beach about a painting on display at the museum's opening of its Lasting Impressions exhibit. ROD VEAL, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
"On the Beach, 1917" by artist Donna Schuster is on display in The Irvine Museum's exhibit "Lasting Impressions: Twenty Years of The Irvine Museum" on display through June 6. ROD VEAL, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Katherine Bland points at a piece on display at The Irvine Museum last week. ROD VEAL, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
The Irvine Museum's executive director Jean Stern, left, and president James Swinden talk to the museum's visitors at the opening of the "Lasting Impressions" exhibit last week. ROD VEAL, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Paul Grimm's "Desert Springtime" is on display in the "Lasting Impressions: Twenty Years of The Irvine Museum" exhibit. COURTESY OF THE IRVINE MUSEUM
Frank Myers' "The Charleston" is on display in the "Lasting Impressions: Twenty Years of The Irvine Museum" exhibit. COURTESY OF THE IRVINE MUSEUM
Granville Redmond's "Moonlight Marsh Scene" is on display in the "Lasting Impressions: Twenty Years of The Irvine Museum" exhibit. COURTESY OF THE IRVINE MUSEUM
William Wendt's "A Clear Day" is on display in the "Lasting Impressions: Twenty Years of The Irvine Museum" exhibit. COURTESY OF THE IRVINE MUSEUM

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